Tuesday, January 14, 2014

scientificamerican | Do blind people understand race? Given the vast and sprawling writings
on race over the past several decades, it is surprising that scholars
have not explored this question in any real depth. Race has played a
profound and central role to human relationships. Yet how is it possible
that this basic question has escaped deeper contemplation?

This gap in the scholarly literature and public discourse points to a
fundamental assumption that we almost all make about race, its
significance, and its salience. Race has been central to human
relationships. Yet, there seems to be at least one thing that most
people can agree upon: that race is, to a large extent, simply what is
seen. There are surely many variables that inform individuals’ racial
consciousness, such as religion, language, food, and culture. But race
is primarily thought to be self-evidently known, in terms of reflecting
the wide variation in humans’ outward appearance tied to ancestry and
geographic origin such as skin color, hair texture, facial shapes, and
other observable physical features. Thus, race is thought to be visually
obvious; it is what you see, in terms of slotting visual engagements
with human bodies into predefined categories of human difference, such
as Black, White, and Asian. Given the dominant role these visual cues
play in giving coherence to social categories of race, it is widely
thought that race can be no more salient or significant to someone who
has never been able to see than the musical genius of Mozart or Jay-Z
can be salient to someone who has never been able to hear. Therefore,
one plausible explanation for why questions concerning blind people’s
understanding of race have not been explored is that, from a sighted
person’s perspective, the answer seems painfully obvious: blind people
simply cannot appreciate racial distinctions and therefore do not have
any real racial consciousness.

This pervasive yet rarely articulated idea that race is visually
obvious—a notion that I call “race” ipsa loquitur, or that race “speaks
for itself”—has at least three components: (1) race is largely known by
physical cues that inhere in bodies such as skin color or facial
features, (2) these cues are thought to be self-evident, meaning that
their perceptibility and salience exist apart from any mediating social
or political influence, and (3) individuals without the ability to see
are thought, at a fundamental level, to be unable to participate in or
fully understand what is assumed to be a quintessentially ocular
experience. Through this “race” ipsa loquitur trope, talking about race
outside of visual references to bodily differences seems absurd, lest we
all become “colorblind” in the most literal sense. Much of the
ideological value in the emerging colorblindness discourse works from
the idea that race and racism are problems of visual recognition, not
social or political practices.

But, how much does the salience of race—in terms of it being experienced
as a prominent and striking human characteristic that affects a
remarkable range of human outcomes—depend upon what is visually
perceived? To play upon the biblical reference to 2 Corinthians 5:7, do
we simply “walk by sight” in that the racial differences are
self-evident boundaries that are impressionable on their own terms? Or,
is there a secular “faith” about race that produces the ability to “see”
the very racial distinctions experienced as visually obvious? And if we
take this idea seriously, that the visual salience of race is produced
rather than merely observed, precisely what is at stake—socially,
politically, and legally—when we misunderstand the process of “seeing
race” as a distinctly visual rather than sociological phenomenon?

In my work, I have pushed the boundaries of the “race” ipsa loquitur
trope by investigating the significance of race outside of vision. I
critique the notion that race is visually obvious and suggest that the
salience of race, in terms of its visually striking nature and attendant
social significance, functions more by social rather than ocular
mechanisms. Though perhaps counterintuitive, I begin with the hypothesis
that our ability to perceive race and subsequently attach social
meanings to different types of human bodies depends little on what we
see; taking vision as a medium of racial truth may very well obscure a
deeper understanding of precisely how race is both apprehended and
comprehended, and thus how it informs our collective imaginations and
personal behaviors as well as how it plays out in everyday life.

13
comments:

dayyum....., that was from a dieudonne account on youtube, posted a few days ago. this one is from dieudonne3 posted 2 days ago, let's see how long this mole in the whack-a-mole with the "authorities" stays alive.

Define what "Racist" is, per YOUR use of the word.* Is A Blind Person Likely To Murder Someone Because Of His Differing Race? * Is A Blind Person Likely To Sexually Oppress Someone Because Of Her Differing Race?* Is A Black Person Likely To Physically Attack...............So, Chances are the term "Racist" is actually "OFFEND THE DIGNITY OF................"STILL - the more relevant question is: "Can a RACIST PERSON act with IMPUNITY today in the United States and have the SYSTEM affirm his hateful act?"How is a series of NON-RACIST murders in Central African Republic, South Sudan and Kenya INFERIOR to a RACE-BASED killing in the United States today? Or Apartheid of the past?

[Ironically, this speech was given just weeks before the Gaza-Israel war that would lead to the deaths of 1400 Palestinians and just 13 Israelis (four from friendly fire). Booker has never spoken about preventing Arab deaths at Israeli hands, which occurred in a ratio of 100-to-1 during that conflict, but that isn't how you build support from AIPAC hardliners.] -- Zaid Jilani

I would expect to see Booker grovel his way right to the top of this list:

You racist Bro. Feed..., let me tug your sleeve real quick and help you refine that aspect of your game. Because with laser precision, you can bulletproof your game from that pernicious slander. See, I've now been lumped in with the much maligned black conservative demographic because of my unstinting criticism of the afrodemic/public intellectual counterinsurgency.

This element here is pre-jail;http://youtu.be/8DrzCVAJtDwhttp://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thug%20toddler&sm=3

Not to be confused or conflated with the overwhelming majority of black folk (yet somehow always confused, conflated, and identified with the overwhelming majority of black folk)

This element here is the afrodemic/public intellectual counterinsurgency (a subset of the Cathedral); http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/01/why-do-americans-hate-welfare-there-is.html

Always making excuses for the pre-jail, demanding limitless public largesse for the pre-jail, and playing a holier-than-thou card for anyone disagreeing with them about the irredeemable nature of the pre-jail.

Then there are the 2nd/3rd line inheritors of the civil rights movement;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PF8DMuWlUshttp://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kwame%20kilpatrick&sm=3

It's insufficient, confusing and misleading to simply lump all these elements together and call them the embedded black fox confidence man, and offer up the GOP as a valid alternative to the same. Something novel, very precise, and impactful is required to successfully implement an effective and black partisan counter-counterinsurgency.

Marvel at how far things have progressed since the era of the original co-opted house negroe who could only aspire to be a highly compensated and broadly esteemed social worker http://youtu.be/J--frF7-ROU

Sandra Neely Smith, a young Afrikan American woman who was murdered by white supremacists in Greensboro in 1979, was a friend of mine. We had worked together in the Student Organization for Black Unity, when she was the SGA president at Bennett College. A group of people organized a split within our organization when they suddenly decided that we should abandon Pan-Afrikanism and focus on the class struggle. Sandra followed Nelson Johnson, and joined the Communist Workers Party (later Workers Viewpoint Organization) where she became on of their leaders. The CWP recognized racism to be an impediment to their efforts to organize textile workers, so they staged high profile “Death To The Klan” rallies across North Carolina. After an earlier confrontation in China Grove, NC, the KKK, with law enforcement informants on board, organized an armed caravan and drove to Greensboro to confront the CWP. The footage in these videos shows some of that confrontation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57KppRIku0k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYXVdLQboKU

[After two criminal trials with all-white juries, not a single gunman was sent to prison. However, in 1985 a civil jury found the city, the Klan and the Nazi party liable for violating the civil rights of the demonstrators. The city paid a $350,000 dollar judgment on behalf of all parties. This was one of the only times in US history that a jury held local police liable for cooperating with Ku Klux Klan in a wrongful death.]

Sloppy thinking and sloppy speech at its finest BD. The Hon.Bro.Preznit and his sidekick Arne Duncan simply don't know how to operate schools and are bankrupt in the practical ideas and practical applications department. Has nothing whatsoever to do with "hating white people".

If that's the best thinking that the right white can muster with regard to the underlying nature of our collective predicament here in America, then the right white is as profoundly lost and confused and the feminist left and its many and sundry Cathedral proxies.

I talked to Sandra at a march the CWP held in Charlotte about that strategy. I reminded her that we grew up listening recordings of Malcolm talking about violence is a language white supremacists clearly understand.I asked her what are you all going to do when these folks cash in those "wolf tickets" you're selling. I also reminded her of the lessons we had learned from the police confrontations with the BPP. We had a guerrilla mindset and now she was hooked into this mess. I was told that she was shot a point blank range in the head. They did not open her casket at the funeral. .

I'm inclined to agree with one of the commenters at the scientific american site. It is likely that the blind people in the study originally used aural cues to distinguish between racial groups. Friends and family then provided the appropriate visual descriptions, followed by the social constructions.